Hi Gary, how are things? Very well, I hope. Anyway, just have a couple quick questions: since the LGGC has been the latest topic of discussion, the Chainmail game in particular, I was wondering, do you have a favourite miniatures game, overall? And, have you ever played Warhammer, and if so, what did you think? Thanks Gary!

Hi Gary, how are things? Very well, I hope. Anyway, just have a couple quick questions: since the LGGC has been the latest topic of discussion, the Chainmail game in particular, I was wondering, do you have a favourite miniatures game, overall? And, have you ever played Warhammer, and if so, what did you think? Thanks Gary!

Ciao

I have historical periods for miniatures play that I enjoy. they are, in order of date:
Ancient
Medieval
ECW
Napoleonic
Napoleonic naval
ACW
Victorian Colonial
WW II
WW II naval

Thanks for the message - I understand and have to agree with you that it just really matters to the individual gaming group and that reminded me that I'm really just making the world that I'd want to play in, and that's good enough advice for me.

I think the same can be said for so much of the gaming world - do you get annoyed at posts that get hung up on arguing what is "right" or "wrong" in RPGing?

With that in mind this question isn't a "which is right," just a matter of curiosity - I noticed that one distinguishing difference between both your early AD&D and LA from other D&D (3e, d20 OGL, etc) is a preference for percentile die checks and more complex variance in use of dice from the standardization going on in much RPGing today. I've never been good at statistics (I'm a theatre guy - so story and character become pretty central to my games), but I remember vividly that one of the 1st things in the old DM's guide was a pretty statistical description of the use of dice and the percentiles involved.

So do you think percentile-based rolls give better variance for encounters and actions than say the d20 way of doing things? I guess what I'm curious about is if there was a mathematical reason for going this route or if it just was personal preference of yours as you developed your games.

Indeed, the best advice I can give is design to please yourself and your trusty gaming comrades so as to maximize the enjoyment generated by playing the campaign.

I do indeed get a bit fed up with disputes about which game is "best," for it is a matter or personal/group taste. The same with niggling over mechanics and rules. The RPG is a bloody GAME, after all is said and done.

As random events occur all the time in actual life, I am a firm believer in having the same thing happen in the role-playing game. Whether the probabilities for various random things are relatively equal as with a linear curve, or wildly disparate, as a bell curve with multiple dice delivers, no matter...aslong as the resulting event is approproate to the likelihood of it occuring when compred to the class of other such events in which it appears.

I do prefer the 100 possibilities of the d% roll to most others, and one can have additional rolls if needed to reflect decrasing probability of the indicated result.

Recently the discussion of whether or not d20 System is "elegant", what elegance in game design is, and how much it matters has been a rather hot topic here. I've read through FUDGE and similar systems, and they've really never grabbed my attention with the "elegance" raving fans seem to attribute to them (see the quote in my sig for my opinion on that). I rather like d20 System (3.0 D&D especially), both in spite of and because of its complexity, and somehow the extremely simple systems don't give me any enjoyment.

As someone who has been in game design for a number of years and has worked on/with rules-light systems that have grabbed my attention, what input can you provide on what "elegance" is in a game system, how you have used it when designing your own systems, and how anyone can use it to improve on their games?

Frankly, I think "elegance" is a pretentious term suimilar to that typically ised by art and antique dealers, "important." Elegant is not a quantifiable thing, it is an opinion and value judgement, as is the term important.

Very ofter I find "elegant" used to laud some truly bad or dull game that only a handful of persons will ever enjoy playing, but some "important" critic/reviewer happens to like, or thinks he should like.

I think if I say more I'll be in trouble with the clique that claims play of RPGs is an art form: